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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29955483">Sleepovers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelfthriver/pseuds/twelfthriver'>twelfthriver</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon compliant for now, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Hidden Rooms, HtN spoilers, Lack of self care, Sharing a Bed, Showers, Slow Burn, bones - Freeform, drowned rat Harrow, mentions of past Coronabeth &amp; Ianthe, terrible flirt Ianthe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:19:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,929</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29955483</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelfthriver/pseuds/twelfthriver</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"You really ought to try the shower, the water pressure is </em>delicious<em> Harry. Don't make that face, it's not as if I'm offering to get in with you."</em></p><p>When Harrow's fear gets in the way of her personal hygiene, Ianthe has something to say about it.</p><p>...<br/>A series of nights on the Mithraeum, set during the time Harrow shares Ianthe's room.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harrowhark Nonagesimus &amp; Ianthe Tridentarius, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sleepovers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You really ought to try the shower, the water pressure is <em>delicious</em> Harry.”</p><p>Ianthe drawled this directive, any suggestiveness of which you were judiciously choosing to ignore, whilst smearing the hilt- hilt? - of her rapier with a thick black polish. The acrid stench hit your sinuses as soon as you’d entered the ridiculous gold and white room, but it was the other baby Lyctor, reclining on the sofa, who caused you to crinkle your nose in distaste.</p><p>A froth of borrowed, gaudy fabric, and backlit by artificial light currently mimicking the intense yellow of late afternoon, she exuded the same energized tranquility she’d shone with ever since the morning you’d fixed her arm.</p><p>This newfound health and wellbeing began to edge insufferability.</p><p> </p><p>Upon passing her in the corridor earlier this morning- you on your way to the kitchen and Ianthe on her way to do whatever Ianthe did- her approach had been heralded by a tuneless auditory garble you’d belatedly understood to be humming. Repeated attempts upon your life had sensitized you to alarm, you held your jaw tight like a wrench. The sudden introduction of this stimuli to the topography of your overworked psyche caused you to bite down and actually crack a molar. Hot pain knifed through your jaw.</p><p><em>"Oh, did I startle you?” </em>her blithe response.</p><p>You could have punched her.</p><p>Instead, you healed the fissure, sealed dentin and enamel around the burning cord of nerve, and continued on your way. The reverberations of that awful humming followed you all the way down the dim hall.</p><p> </p><p>And now, when you truly just wanted to let your head hit the pillow, you were met with this: Ianthe’s impassive white face and her irksome offer of bathing facilities. <em>You really ought to try the shower Harry. </em></p><p>The invitation felt inherently indecent in some way you could not pinpoint. The Less-Hot Princess of Ida was herself, as a general rule, inherently indecent. Unsettling in the same way as the sensation produced by crawling beneath bedclothes, only to feel the wet slick of serpent skin brush the soft under-arches of your feet. This comparison was perhaps an uncharitable one, given it was you who had been sleeping in Ianthe’s quarters for what would be going on three nights now.</p><p>“There’s a bath in there too of course,” she continued “if you’d prefer it. But I <em>do </em>enjoy the-”</p><p>
  <em>Enough. </em>
</p><p>“As tempting as that offer is, Tridentarius, I’d rather nail my tongue to the practice room floor. I’ve had enough of your juvenile provocations to last a myriad. I’m going to go to sleep now.”</p><p>You were ready for some asinine and probably vulgar retort to your rudeness, but none came.</p><p>Ianthe shrugged, as though this whole exchange had suddenly bored her, and continued polishing her rapier. There was an uncharacteristic gentleness in her movements, almost a show of care, but something stilted in her manner suggested you were not quite released from her attention. The amethysts studding the hilt glinted at you. Her arm, her hand- your arm, your hand- came to steady the sword. Her meat hand, stained a grainy pitch that collected in the seams of her fingernails and the webs between her fingers, swiped along winding threads of steel. She was making a spectacle of ignoring you. Fine then.</p><p>You took two steps towards the giant bed. At this, Ianthe reacted. She spun the sword in a wide arc so that the side of the blade nudged your waist, barring your progress. She looked you square in the face, giving you another opportunity to appreciate the splotchy multi-coloured mess of her eyes, and she told you the goddamn truth.</p><p>“You’re rank, Harrow.”</p><p>This, more than the sword at your hip, froze you. Like someone had bundled up the lacework of your nerves and dumped them in an ice bucket. The feeling of being found out had never sat well with you.</p><p>“Use the shower, the bath, or even the goddamned sink, but you’re not getting anywhere near that bed until you do.”</p><p>After somebody had attempted to murder you in it, the prospect of using the bathtub in your own rooms had become deeply unappealing. A lurching queasiness set upon you, and you could not shuck your robes without the discomforting pang of unacceptable vulnerability. As a result, the scent emanating from your person was also deeply unappealing.</p><p>You had irrationally carried on as if no one would notice. Ianthe noticed.</p><p>To your credit, you had been dabbing at essential body parts with moist wads of tissue in lieu of actual bathing, and considered this a solid effort. But over a week of seeing how much of your head you could squeeze beneath the little hand wash faucet in your room (given the amount of sweating, bleeding and vomiting any week on the Mithraeum had so far contained), proved the effectiveness of this strategy to be dubious. At this point you probably could have killed the Saint of Duty simply by flapping the armpits of your robes at him.</p><p>A muscle quirked at the side of Ianthe’s mouth. She balanced the sword against the arm of the sofa and looked up at you with practiced composure. She was undoubtedly enjoying watching the Reverend Daughter grasp unsuccessfully for a comeback.</p><p>“Don’t make that face, it’s not as if I’m offering to get in with you,”</p><p>You briefly contemplated how her spine would look gracing the mantelpiece of your study back on the Ninth.</p><p>“I know we now have a <em>cherished</em> sisterly bond, but I absolutely cannot indulge your need for nightly comfort until you demonstrate a commitment to personal hygiene.”</p><p>A churlish impulse suggested you take your pillow and find a comfy patch of floor. An even worse, nameless one balked at the idea of sleeping alone and exposed.</p><p>Your face might have coloured once, at such indignity as being instructed to shower by Ianthe Tridentarius, under threat of having to sleep alone. As a mature woman of eighteen, and a Fist and Gesture of the Emperor, no less. You would have balked even as an infant, in rage you would have admitted to and embarrassment you would have not. Perhaps even now a few capillaries did bloom beneath the skull of the dying anchorite covering your cheeks. But petty humiliations like this were now a daily occurrence.</p><p>You pivoted on your heel, and wordlessly stalked towards the bathroom, leaving Ianthe to be smug and terrible where you did not have to witness it.</p><p> </p><p>The tiled room was small, but well appointed. Bath, shower, toilet, little sink with a mirror above it. Towel railings upon which were strung towels of the same garishness smothering the rest of the Third’s quarters. Some cupboards which you opened and then shut upon entry, a customary caution. Satisfied, you turned and gummed generous quantities of bone onto the door frame- more out of habit than actual suspicion your privacy would be invaded- at least by Ianthe. These defences would be horrifically useless should the Saint of Duty resume his one-man mission to wring every piece of utility from the phrase ‘if at first you don’t succeed’, but the act of setting up the wards comforted you.</p><p>Sleep had made you less paranoid, which is to say you were still paranoid in the extreme, but marginally less psychotic than when your glands were pumping out an artificial tide of cortisol. The bathroom was quiet. The white tiles made it a little too bright for your liking and hurt your eyes, but the ornate touches on everything prevented it from recalling too much the hospital on board the Erebos. You started to feel less annoyed at being forced into showering, and more relieved at the prospect of being clean again.</p><p>Fortunately, the success of Ianthe’s sparring date with Augustine the First had lessened the tone of impending doom fogging the Mithraeum, albeit into one of slightly less impending doom. That was a mercy. Your reflection in the tall mirror, however, was not.</p><p>You assessed your options.</p><p>The vacant gut of the bath- claw-footed, and larger than the one in your own rooms- was obviously unfavourable. The shower bore greater resemblance to the sonic cleaner you would have preferred, and as much as it grieved you to give your sister Lyctor even further obeisance, this is the choice you went with.</p><p>You pulled open the glass frame, curled a fat bolt of bone around the handle and began twiddling the gold knobs on the wall. Water sprang violently from above you. You scrambled to turn off the flow. Prepared now, and having retreated to drop your robes in a little black pile on the floor outside, you tried again. The water went from scalding to freezing and back again until you figured out how to twist the fixtures in what was evidently some arcane and mysterious ritual, so that the searing rush dwindled down to nothing, and then up to a steady flow. It turned out showering was like being poked with a thousand hot needles; though you supposed it was a more efficient method of getting clean than stewing in a bowl of your own filth. So much for Ianthe’s judgement of the water pressure. Of course she would be into this.</p><p>The many soaps and serums and fluffy brushes littering the built-in shelf on the wall behind you emitted a sharp floral scent which you recognised as Ianthe’s, and, at one horrible point, the pad of your foot landed on a crisscross of limp blonde hair clogging the drain. Despite her proclaimed disinterest in joining you, it seemed rather impossible to get away from Ianthe. You chose the plainest smelling soap.</p><p>Taking a little wooden scrubbing brush, and attacking the muck beneath your fingernails nudged loose a grain of memory from early on in your existence. Great Aunt Lachrimorta’s arthritic grip on your wrist as she scrubbed at your ash-coated fingers with stiff bristles. The stench of tooth decay and snow leek stew close to your face, over marinated, the Body silently watching from beyond. You did not stoop to imagine pity in that perfect gaze, nor did it possess any.</p><p>When you were done, your hair was soft again due to no longer being ninety percent grease, your face was paintless, and the reformed bones of your exoskeleton were white and shining. You reached for one of the lavender coloured towels on the rack. It bore signs of prior use, some fraying here and there, and had clearly been made for someone much taller and broader than you*. You wrapped the towel around your body, beneath your armpits. It reached halfway down your calves and left your ankles perilously nude. Another, you threw over your shoulders, shrouding as much of your neck and the lengths of your arms as you could. Catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you were glad of the clouds of condensation obscuring your face. Rummaging through your discarded robes, you unearthed a little pot of paint, and drew a minimal design on your skin. You had been exposed enough for one day.</p><p>A good house-guest, you cleaned up after yourself. Removed the defensive plaque of osteosis affixed to the doors. Impolite, to leave it there. The pile of black robes, which probably should have been burned at this point, if we’re being honest, you left on the floor deal with later.</p><p> </p><p>Re-entering the main room, you discovered Ianthe had rearranged herself on the bed with a book, which she was flipping through, and an apple, which she was glaring at; worrying her thin lower lip with her teeth. But on seeing you, her expression cleared, brightened. She scanned you up and down and produced a quick laugh that dangerously resembled a snort.</p><p>“You look like Mr Chibbles”, she said.</p><p>You did not understand the contents of this accusation, nor know how to respond to it.</p><p>“Mr. Chibbles the rat. Who falls into a drain… gets rescued by a pair of orphans up from the countryside… ”</p><p>You were drawing a blank.</p><p>“Fuck. Do they not have children’s stories on the Ninth? It’s really just all knucklebones and proverbs from birth?”</p><p>It had been, in fact, all knucklebones and proverbs from birth. Thank God. It addled the mind somewhat, to think it could have been otherwise.</p><p>With as much dignity as you could muster, which was not very much, given that Ianthe had just rather inspiredly compared you to a sewer dwelling rodent from a children’s book, you replied</p><p>“I do not think such literature would be considered spiritually edifying for a Reverend Daughter of Drearburh. Also, I’d like to borrow a clean set of clothes.”</p><p>You were awkward, standing with your hair dripping, in your towel cocoon.</p><p>Grinning like a cat, Ianthe levered herself out of the bed, and swept across to the wardrobe where she fished out two items, one of which was the nightgown you had worn previously. She presented the garment to you on the thin gold crook of her bone finger. As you took it from her, the flesh of your palm brushed the chilly gilded surface of the construct you still remembered each second of erecting with a wash of elation. The faint scent of green apple lingered in the air between you, and when you looked up you saw her studying your face, and could not work out her expression.</p><p>Your eyes met.</p><p>“You’re going to get paint on my pillows again” said Ianthe, affecting a sulk.</p><p>“Now hurry up and put that thing on, it’s getting late, and Augustine insists on torturing me with another early round.”</p><p>And then she turned around and pulled her billowy white shirt right up over her head, subjecting you to a glimpse of the light ripple of muscle in her back, the elegant curve of her hip, the shocking juxtaposition of flesh and construct at the juncture of her right shoulder. And then in an instant a fresh nightgown tumbled down over her body, and she kicked away the black trousers she had worn.</p><p>When she turned back around to look at you, you saw that her new choice of bedclothes had a shock of bile hued frilling down the front. It was terribly unflattering. She looked at you expectantly. A moment passed before you realised she was waiting for you to change right in front of her.</p><p>“Still so modest, sister?”</p><p>She adopted an attitude of playful mock offence.</p><p>“As though I’m some kind of sexual predator. Some <em>deviant…</em>I suppose you’re not entirely wrong though,” she amended, looking down to where your towel-tent stopped.</p><p>“Those furry little ankles of yours are driving me wild. Seeing everything at once might cause me simply to keel over.”</p><p>Her voice dripped sarcasm and despite yourself you were amused. Amusement did not stop you from once again turning your back on Ianthe Tridentarius and stalking toward the bathroom, nightgown successfully acquired. There had been a challenge somewhere in those eyes, but it was not one you were prepared to meet.</p><p> </p><p>Later, when you finally climbed into bed, and darkness swallowed up the room, a thought drifted up to the top of your mind and passed your lips spontaneously.</p><p>“You know, I wouldn’t have thought stories about orphans rescuing small animals would be your area of interest either, even in infancy.”</p><p>A moment of silence, the faint buzz of the air conditioning system. Perhaps Ianthe was asleep already, or simply choosing not to respond to you.</p><p>But then she said, “It was Corona’s favourite, when we were three.”</p><p>Trying to picture Ianthe as a three year old was challenging. The fact that you had never seen a three year old up close accounted for much of the difficulty. You understood that infants possessed ample pads of fat in their faces, and found it impossible to reconcile this feature with Ianthe’s long angular jaw.</p><p>“For ages she found even slightly jauntier material too frightening.”</p><p>A yawn.</p><p>“Not for lack of me trying.”</p><p>Again, you felt the size of the gap between you widen, and you heard the mawkishness disappear from her voice.</p><p>“We would read together most nights, even when we were definitely too old for it. The children in the story were a brother and sister. We’d take the different parts and play-act. I always got the older brother, naturally…which left the eponymous role vacant. Sometimes, if we wanted to tease Babs…”</p><p>Here, she bit off the sentence. You were not lying close enough to feel her shifting on the bed, but in the dark you heard the rustle of sheets as Ianthe rolled to face away from you.</p><p>“Anyway, that’s how I know the story.”</p><p>Something in your chest twisted in a way that resembled sympathy, maybe even pity. You knew that expressing anything of the kind would be fatal. Fortunately, you had no desire to. You let her last sentence hang between you in the close dark.</p><p>Adjusting your head on the pillow caused too-long locks of hair to brush your cheek. The clean smell of soap tickled your nose when you inhaled, the length of each breath steadily expanding. Eventually the heaviness of your eyelids won out over the view of the Cavalier and the Melon, the awareness of your sword lying heavy, insensate beside you like a lover, the sound of Ianthe’s gentle snoring. Only the faint thread of fear and vacancy, which never quite unwove itself from your unconscious mind, and had somehow snagged on that conversation, followed you into sleep.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*(0.5BH...you had always been rather triangular)&lt;-- Here, I took out the horrible maths joke and put it in the notes.</p><p>Not totally sure where I'm going with the next chapters yet, but I wanted more of the Ianthe/Harrow dynamic, so I'm attempting it myself. Coming out of a massive writing slump and feeling kinda rusty, but I'm super happy to have this finished and somewhat presentable.</p><p>Comments make me dance gleefully around my house, so please let me know what you think! :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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